refocus images

I came accross some interesting technology. I don't know the technical details about it, but there is already a lot of information on the web about it. It's about an image taken with a special camera with multiple lenses. Afterwards it's possible to change the focus of it. The idea and concept are already from 1903, but only now our computers are getting strong enough to compute it.



If you want to know more about it, here's a list of sites describing it:

http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/lfcamera/
http://audioblog.fr/archives/2007/10/02/adobe-dave-story-future/
http://www.time4.com/time4/microsites/popsci/howitworks/lightfield_camera.html

Linux: Start an application in a specific language

Another hidden but very interesting and helpful trick is how to start programs in your own language. I think everyone that is into computers and helps others a lot with computer problems has had this problem. You're helping someone that has set his computer on another language. You are trying to find the right places to click, but it's a lot harder in another language.

Now in linux it is very easy to help yourself out. Just start the terminal (gnome-terminal in gnome and konsole in kde) and type:

LANG=en_US application

or (for kde)
KDE_LANG=en_US application

This will start the application in the English language (Given that this language is installed for that program).

Run multiple versions of Firefox simultaneous

Now Firefox 3.0 is shaping and finally getting better than the Firefox 2.0 use to be. I start using Firefox 3.0 the whole time. Now sometime I need to go to Firefox 2.0. (Plugin issues, Extensions that aren't working yet or to compare what's the difference between them.) Now I used to close Firefox, because if a specific version of Firefox is running and you open a new instance (even if you try to start the other version) you will get the version that is already running. So I thought it wasn't possible to run multiple versions of Firefox.

Not a long time ago I learned I was wrong. That is possible and it isn't that hard. You only need to start your second version of firefox like that:

firefox -no-remote -ProfileManager

One side note is that each version you want to run needs his own profile. So if you start Firefox 3.0 with the default profile. You need another profile to start Firefox 2.0. This command also starts the Profile Manager where you can make a new profile and start right away with Firefox 3.0 and Firefox 2.0 next to each other.